Increasing plant growth and food production is a major concern around the world. As world populations increase, the need for more food production increases as well. However, the available land to produce food is decreasing due to soil degradation, salinity, reduced water quality, increased industrialization, and other land demands.
In addition to decreasing land for agriculture, there is also a demand for the protection of water supplies. Fertilizers and pesticides applied to the soil to increase food production can be washed away and enter surface and groundwater supplies. Nutrient loading of waterways is not healthy for humans or animals, and must be removed before the water is safe to drink or use.
Costs of fertilizers have increased due to energy and transportation costs, thus farm profits are negatively impacted. Farmers must find ways of maximizing the efficiency of fertilizers.
Water quality is decreasing in major agricultural regions of the United States and the world which further impacts the production of agricultural crops.
There are many ways known to increase plant growth, including application of nutrients (fertilizers and plant growth stimulants). The effects of these types of applications, however, are limited by the manner in which the plants and soil absorb and process these nutrients. Further, excess nutrients are usually applied to offset the amount of fertilizers that are leached away by rain and irrigation or that are immobilized or fixed in the soil and thus become unavailable for plant uptake.
It is also known in the industry that certain bacteria and microorganisms assist in plant growth. For example, bacteria are needed to fix atmospheric nitrogen and then convert this nitrogen to a plant-available form. Microorganisms are known to stimulate plant growth through solubilization of phosphorus or mineralization of other nutrients which then become available for plant uptake and growth. For these types of microorganisms to be used in commercial products, they must be maintained in pure, individual culture and mass produced when needed for assembly, possibly with other microorganisms or additives, into a final product. Since microorganisms are living cells, certain storage conditions must be maintained to keep the cells in a viable form.
Also known to science is the fact that interactions of microorganisms with their environment produces bioactive compounds, generally believed to be compounds such as proteins, small peptides, or other types of molecular structures, which can assist the microorganism in improving physical and chemical aspects of the soil, and stimulate plant growth and nutrient uptake in the plant. However, the exact nature and identification of the specific bioactive compounds that create these beneficial effects is still unknown.
Microorganisms and their bioactive compounds when applied to the soil, can stimulate plant root growth thereby increasing nutrient uptake. This improves the utilization of applied fertilizers thus reducing fertilizer loss and environmental impact.
One example of the use of microorganisms is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application No. 2006/0027496 by Campion, et al. In Campion, a lagoon system is described with anaerobic, facultative, and aerobic stratum whereby the aerobic stratum may be artificially induced by aeration, and additional aerobic bacteria may be artificially added. The system is designed to treat a manure slurry, and the liquid thereof, extracted from the aerobic stratum, may be applied to land as a fertilizer without further processing. Campion mentions the presence of “byproducts” and “growth stimulators” in the lagoon system design, but only in the context that these compounds provide nutrients or otherwise support bacterial fermentation and methanogenesis. Thus the bioactive compounds described by Campion function internally within the lagoon system to process a raw manure slurry. The biological content of the lagoon liquid is not disclosed.
An example of the use of a microbial community to produce a material to stimulate plant growth are products sold by Advanced Microbial Solutions, LLC (“AMS”) of Pilot Point, Tex. under the trademarks and trade names SuperBio SoilBuilder®, SuperBio Ag Blend®, SuperBio SoilLife™, and NutriLife®. These products are sold by AMS and its licensees across the United States and overseas. These products are created from a unique community of microbes and biological material after a fermentation process. The AMS fermentation system results in the production of a fermentation extract solution containing live microorganisms and bioactive compounds. The base fermentation extract solution is sold as SuperBio SoilBuilder®, and serves as the primary ingredient for additional commercial products identified above. The fermentation extract solution contains many different species of microorganisms and many different bioactive compounds. However, it is unknown which specific types of bioactive compounds or the interaction between them produce the beneficial effects shown by the use of the fermentation extract solution of the prior art.